1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to a a billing/clearing house system and method for an overloaded card, and, in particular, to a system and method for managing an overloaded card which is an existing card that has its own card service(s) that is overloaded with services for other cards wherein the existing card is the only card that has to be used and providing billing/clearing house services and billing/clearing house management for the overloaded card and its associated services. Still particularly, the present invention relates to a billing management system and method for an overloaded card for providing a clearing house for charges made using the overloaded card and for consolidating the charges into a single bill for the card holder or user.
2. Description of the Related Art
A person may typically carry a various number of cards, such as credit cards, driver""s license card, membership cards, etc., with him or her. However, the carrying of so many cards may be quite cumbersome and bulky for a person. For example, the large number of cards may cause a person""s wallet to bulge. Also, the tasks of managing and tracking so many cards may become quite a hassle or burden.
Various types of universal cards or smart cards have been developed to integrate convenience and usability of multiple cards of a user into a single card. For these types of universal cards or smart cards, a generic universal card or generic smart card is provided, and the card services from all the different cards that a person owns is associated and programmed to the single universal card or smart card. The single generic card is generally used to integrate card services from various cards, and the card itself has no other functions or inherent operations. Some of these universal cards or smart cards require changing, updating, and/or maintaining of stored data on the cards themselves or may require the informing of the card service providers of the various cards regarding the integration of the cards to the universal card or smart card. Furthermore, some of these universal cards or smart cards require a power source to maintain, store, and/or display the data on the card. U.S. Pat. No. 5,530,232 to Taylor; U.S. Pat. No. 4,700,055 to Kashkashian Jr.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,443,027 to McNeely et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,546,523 to Gatto; U.S. Pat. No. 4,593,936 to Opel; U.S. Pat. No. 5,276,311 to Hennige; U.S. Pat. No. 5,477,040 to Lalonde provide examples of such universal cards or smart cards.
However, the problem with universal cards or smart cards is that they require the providing of the additional generic cards that are not themselves inherently functional or operational cards. For authentication purposes, a vendor or business establishment may not simply accept the universal card or smart card on its face value and may still require seeing and verifying the existence of the actual, real card itself that has been integrated into the universal card or smart card. This requirement defeats one of the main purposes of having a universal card or smart card since the person would still have to carry the cards that were integrated into the single universal card or smart card in the event of an authentication or verification request.
Furthermore, the integration of several cards and their card services into one single card results in a management problem in that the services of all the cards associated to the single card have to be carefully tracked and maintained by the card user. However, such a management task may be extremely cumbersome and tedious. For example, if a card user wishes or needs to change his/her billing address, then the card user has to remember every card with a respective card service that has been associated to the universal single card. The card user then has to contact every respective card service provider for each of the cards associated to the universal single card. Furthermore, if the card user wishes to change using his/her present universal single card to using another universal single card, then the card user has to engage in the tedious tasks of tracking and remembering all of the card information associated with the first universal card, canceling the first universal card and its services, and setting up and programming the second universal card and its respective services with all of the information from the first universal card and any other new information.
Also, the billing of charges made on a universal card also needs to be managed and/or tracked. Without any billing management, the universal card is used by a user, and the respective card service providers receive the charges made at corresponding business establishments or vendors. The billing service providers for the card service providers, in turn, bill the user for the charges. The user receives bills from each of these service providers for the various accounts utilized on the universal card. A summary of charges for the universal card is not readily available, and the user is not able to readily manage or track billing activities on his/her universal card. The user is not able to obtain a single bill summarizing all charges made by the universal card. Also, a central clearing house for charges made on all accounts associated to the universal card would be desired since it would act as an efficient check and further security mechanism on charges made by using a universal card.
It would therefore be advantageous and desirable to provide a billing/clearing house system and method for a universal card. It would also be advantageous and desirable to provide a card management system for managing services of the universal card wherein the card management system allows easy or automatic updating or changing of information relating to the universal card and universal card services and wherein the card management system is able to provide billing/clearing house services for all of the cards associated to the universal card. It would further be advantageous and desirable to allow a user to be able to readily manage or track billing activities on his/her universal card and to obtain a single bill summarizing all charges made by the universal card. It would still further be advantageous and desirable to provide a central clearing house for charges made on all accounts associated to the universal card wherein the clearing house at least acts as an efficient check and further security mechanism on charges made by using a universal card.
It is therefore one object of the present invention to provide a billing/clearing house system and method for an overloaded card.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a card management system for managing services of the overloaded card wherein the card management system allows easy or automatic updating or changing of information relating to the overloaded card and overloaded card services and wherein the card management system is able to provide billing/clearing house services for all of the cards associated to the overloaded card.
It is a further object of the present invention to allow a user to be able to readily manage or track billing activities on his/her overloaded card and to obtain a single bill summarizing all charges made by the overloaded card.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide a central clearing house for charges made on all accounts associated to the overloaded card wherein the clearing house at least acts as an efficient check and further security mechanism on charges made by using an overloaded card.
The foregoing objects are achieved as is now described. A system and method of providing, using, and managing an overloaded card with overloaded card services and providing billing services to a user of the overloaded card. An existing card is associated with an associated card service that is used by the user. The existing card is set up as the overloaded card with the overloaded card services by associating at least one other service of at least one other card to the existing card. An overloaded card provider server system provides the overloaded card with overloaded card services. The existing card is used as the overloaded card with the overloaded services which include the associated card service and at least one service. The overloaded card with the overloaded services is managed. Transactions of the overloaded card are tracked, and the user is respectively billed for the transactions. The transactions are cleared before billing the transactions to the user. All information relating to the transactions are consolidated on a single statement that is provided to the user. The overloaded card manager is used to manage the overloaded card and its services and provide the billing/clearing house services.
The above as well as additional objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent in the following detailed written description.